Commentary: Georgia wastes money on testing

First, pressure is mounting nationally against the two Common Core Standards testing consortiums: Smarter Balanced and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

Georgia belongs to PARCC as did Alabama, until it recently opted out of both consortiums. Utah left last year and Colorado and Indiana currently have legislation to opt out of the consortiums, and South Carolina introduced legislation to opt out of the standards altogether.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through the National Governors Association and the organization of state school superintendents, funded the Common Core Standards, which are now the curricular coin of the realm in 46 states.

Race to the Top Money designed to sweeten the deal for joining the Common Core comes from the U.S. Department of Education. The Pioneer Institute in Massachusetts claims this federal funding runs afoul of three federal laws prohibiting the government from being involved in matters of curriculum.

The real dealbreaker, however, may be in the prohibitive costs of implementing all new tests.

Peter Dewitt, an elementary principal writing in Diane Ravitch’s blog, notes that “we lack the infrastructure to be testing factories, and that shouldn’t be our job in the first place.” Lawmakers, though, face increased lobbying from the same old test makers, Pearson, ETS and, the maker of Georgia’s tests, McGraw Hill. These companies stand to make fortunes on the assessments.

The second development that legislators should mark is happening on the West Coast, where high school teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle have refused to administer the Measures of Academic Progress test, a test also commonly used in Georgia.

The Garfield boycott has been embraced as a national call to action and appears to be getting traction. Two other schools have joined the boycott and the 1.5 million-member American Federation of Teachers have offered support.

The teachers are not opposed to giving the state test; they’re opposed to all the additional testing that yields little information on student progress.

In many Georgia school districts, teachers give the CRCT and high school graduation tests. Few realize that many of these districts are also giving the quarterly versions of the same test so that they know what’s coming down the pike at year’s end.

On top of the state tests are the MAP tests, national standardized tests like the ITBS, the state’s technology test, and so on. There is so much testing that time for actual instruction dramatically decreases.

Dennis Van Roekal, president of the 3 million-member National Education Association, wants all systems to “heed those teachers,” especially in districts that require tests for expensive programs, as well as state tests.

Given the deplorable state of educational funding in Georgia, can we continue to use our limited resources on duplicative, counter-productive testing that is rapidly falling out of favor nationwide?

Michael Moore is a professor of literacy education at Georgia Southern University. mmoore@georgiasouthern.edu.